In an excellent piece of work, Washington's Blog digs up historical statistics that take a fresh look at the Great Depression's unemployment using a methodology closer to the current methods from the BLS (which go into our "headline unemployment" stats). What he finds is that the Great Depression's unemployment wasn't so great -- or our current unemployment is likely worse -- depending on your perspective, of course. An extended discussion of employment factors in the current economic malaise follows. It is all worth reading.